


Bonding

by Nathamuel



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Bonding, M/M, Past Child Abuse, Scars, Soul Bond, Wrists, past Self-Mutilation, past self-harm, soul mates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-01
Updated: 2014-07-01
Packaged: 2018-02-06 21:53:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1873824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nathamuel/pseuds/Nathamuel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which the name of your soul mate appears on your skin and Howard finally stops running from Steve.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bonding

**Author's Note:**

  * For [blakefancier](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blakefancier/gifts).



> This is a birthday gift to Blakefancier. :) Hope you enjoy it my dear!

_Steve Rogers_

The name hadn't been visible on his arm since Howard had been a teenager, since he took a burner's blue flame to his skin to make the disgust on his father's face go away. Now there was only a large and deep, gnarled scar covering his lower arm, spreading to his palm and the crook of his elbow. 

Back then, there had been no regret. Back then he'd only been glad that it had been his _left arm_ instead of his right one. That he could still work and invent and let Stark Industries flourish and that his father could pretend that there had never been a name at all. 

Now, with only a hint of sensation filtering through the damaged skin from Steve's lips caressing his arm, Howard found himself regretting his actions for the first time.

_Maybe I should have been stronger._ Howard mused while he sat before his soul mate, on his bed, his own name almost burning against his palm where he had it wrapped around Steve's wrist, just holding on. Not that he believed that Steve would run away from him now, not with how he'd hovered at Howard's side ever since they had met each other. _Not with how they were drawn to each other._ an unkind voice whispered in his head. The soul bond didn't let you run away. 

Howard knew by experience. 

He was tired of running.

"Why did you do it?" Steve whispered, a puff of breath against a place on his arm where he could feel it. A shiver ran through him, spreading outwards from that spot. Howard contemplated how much to tell him. It was a testament to how well Steve seemed to know him already that it didn't cross his mind that it could have been an accident. (It wasn't.)

"Because it was easier." easier than the stares, the accusations and the beatings. There was a puff of breath against his shoulder when Steve exhaled and his forehead thumped against the spot a moment afterwards. Howard shuddered and his cock gave a twitch. He was half hard from Steve's mere presence, let alone the touch of his fingers, loosely circled around his wrist and spanning his waist. They were both down to their underwear and he couldn't look away from Steve. He was still expecting the other shoe to drop, for people to crash into the room and punish them for having a same-sex name on their skin. But no one would dare touch the best engineer of America, let alone Captain America.

"What are you thinking of?" Steve asked, a motion of his mouth against Howard's skin, his cheek, making him swallow the sudden burst of _want_ when Steve leaned into him. It was such an intimate gesture, familiar even though they had touched little before.  
Howard's skin felt too tight. He wanted to push Steve on his back and climb all over him.

At Howard hesitation, Steve looked up at him.

"I was just thinking," Howard said slowly, "about us, I suppose." about what the future would hold for them. Feeling awkward, he looked down at his hands, both of them touching the man in front of him. His left was circled around Steve's wrist, the other rested on his thigh. 

His body yearned to complete the bond while his mind struggled against it.

"I want," Steve began carefully, nothing more than a whisper. Howard wasn't used to seeing him so nervous (he was used to seeing the barely veiled hurt whenever Steve had looked at him after his wordless rejection, back before he'd become Captain America).

"I want us to bond." Steve said and Howard leaned back from where he'd bumped his head against Steve's. His eyes sought something else to look at when he answered. "What about the others?"

"What others?" Steve asked. Howard was caught by the steady look Steve gave him, aware of the uncertainty behind the confidence. His heart skipped a beat. God, he loved those blue eyes. (That admission hurt even in the safety of his own head.)

"The Howling Commandoes? The SSR? I don't believe that America will be happy to find out that their favorite patriot is a _faggot_!" Howard spit out the last word like the curse that it was and regretted it the moment he felt Steve flinch and pull back. Howard's shoulders slumped and before he could override his instinct he had curled against the other man, cradling his face in his hands and pressing their foreheads together in lieu of a kiss.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry, please forgive me." he murmured into the space between their mouths and saw Steve close his eyes. Some of the tension bled out of him. 

"The Commandoes know already." he finally admitted. When Howard tensed he pressed a quick kiss on Howard's lips, eyes tender when Howard chased after him unconsciously when he pulled back. 

Howard frowned, looked away and hunched his shoulders as he came aware of his actions. 

"It's ok, Howard. They don't mind." Steve tried to calm him and Howard was sure that the first part wasn't about his comrades at all. 

"I nearly lost you." Howard blurted out, like it wasn't a realization he'd had a hundred times since he'd found Steve in the ice. 

"But you didn't. You found me." Steve said, pressing close and there was the same desperation in his touch that had been there when they'd been alone after their reunion. When they had rutted like dogs, half-clothed and frenzied, but not bonded.

Howard pushed at Steve's shoulders to put space between them again before he could accidentally rectify that. The stump of the incomplete bond he always perceived at the edge of his awareness _surged_ and Howard mentally clamped down on it. 

If they had been bonded when Steve crashed with his plane, if he'd stayed dead and hadn't been found (if Howard hadn't found him through the very same senses that he'd rejected ever since a name appeared on his arm), chances would have been that Howard would have ended up catatonic. (The thought hadn't even crossed his mind on the ship, all his senses, his entire _being_ focused on finding Steve.) 

The chanced were higher with a fulfilled bond. A darker part of Howard, the most cynical part of him, sneered that it was better to live with a void in his chest than exist as a vegetable with a fulfilled bond but a dead soul mate.

Steve's hands crept back to Howard's waist, Howard leaned into the touch without conscious thought.  
"When you searched for me, did you tell anyone how you knew where to find me?" Steve asked curiously, nose bumping against Howard's cheek again and Howard kept himself from kissing him by sheer force of will. (The last few month he had practiced restrains when he'd found himself in front of Steve's door at the crack of dawn over and over again without knowing how he'd gotten there. He was less careless when awake, even when his feet tried to turn him into Steve's direction.)

"No. But they suspected, no doubt. Peggy does at least, as does Phillips." Howard paused, remembering the man's unreadable look when he'd caught on to the little tells of an unbonded pair. "Peggy thinks me a fool." he said ruefully. 

Peggy's arm was hidden as well, Howard didn't know what kind of name was on her skin. Steve chuckled slightly. 

"She's not the only one." Steve said and caressed Howard's skin apologetically when Howard tensed, offended. When Howard made to move away, Steve pulled them back into a kneeling position.  
His face was serious.

"You're not the only one who's scared, but I know that you want me. We are destined to be together or do you want to pretend that you don't feel that pull, too?" he said and frustration had crept into his voice, interlacing with the gentleness he'd shown all day. 

Howard wanted to scoff at that. The way he'd pushed and pushed and pushed the sailors towards the place he knew Steve had crashed without any coordinates, the way he'd neither slept or eaten was evidence enough.  
But how much free will was there in the first place?

The soul mate's bond didn't care if your soul mate was a bad person, it was biology, a biological imperative that pushed you toward the one person whose name was written on your skin. 

When Howard's mother had deigned to speak to him at all she told him about how the bond felt, how it made you feel complete and how it pushed and pulled when incomplete, because for everyone it felt different, that incomplete bond. 

For Howard it felt like a void in his mind, his chest. Something that was missing.  
So far he'd been able to ignore it sufficiently. (Until he'd met his intended, a little runt of a man with steel in his eyes and his spine.) 

"Of course I do. Everyone does." he said sharply, drawing a hand through his hair in frustration and caught Steve's eyes landing on his damaged arm. 

"Why do you fight me?" Steve asked and for all the quiet way he said it, it still sounded like a demand. His hands had landed on Howard's shoulders, tense like he wanted to shake him.

"I-..." Howard started, stopped. For weeks he hadn't been able to deny that he wanted it, wanted the bond and to fall into Steve and never let go. But his father's voice still lurked in the back of his mind. 

"What does the unfulfilled bond feel like to you?" he asked instead. _Safer ground, safer ground._ his mind shrieked.

"Like a pressure on my chest, like I can't breathe." Steve answered honestly, not missing a beat. "Some doctors said that my asthma was encouraged by that." he added a moment later. "You didn't answer me." Steve pointed out when Howard stayed silent. His hands slid down Howard's arms and he took his hands into his own, interlaced their fingers. Howard looked down on them. They sat so close together that their thighs brushed.

Howard's voice was small when he finally spoke. "I'm tired." he said to buy time. "Can you protect me when it goes wrong, when we're not accepted?" he wanted to look away. Feeling vulnerable had never been a favorite emotion of his and to bare himself like this...

"I will always protect you. I swear it. No one will lay a hand on you again." Steve said slowly, steadily. He didn't let Howard look away.

Howard believed him.

Then it felt like a string had been snapped, tension that Howard hadn't even known was there suddenly fell away. It felt almost too easy, giving in. He'd been holding back so long he felt dizzy, swaying forward and Steve's arms came up around him, when he let the bond do what it wanted.

Carefully, Steve let them fall back on the bed in a controlled move, when they surged forward as one to lock their mouths together. A helpless noise escaped Howard when Steve pulled back and stripped off the last garment keeping him from being naked. Howard had touched himself to thoughts of Steve, imagined himself above him, imagined himself under him. Even now he couldn't decide what he wanted more, which of these fantasies had made him come harder into his hand those cold and lonely nights. 

"I thought of this." Howard's mouth said before his mind could interfere and Steve paused, one knee on the bed. Howard's toe stroked along the inside of his thigh, tongue darting out when Steve's lids fluttered. His cock was hard, jutting from his groin and Howard wanted to _taste_ him. (His own cock ached in sympathy in the confinements of Howard's underwear.)

"Of us? Together in bed?" Steve murmured as he crawled forward, hands sliding upwards over Howard's legs. He gasped and nodded, nodded again when Steve looked at him for allowance before he pulled Howard's underwear down his legs, leaving him bare. 

Steve's hand was warm and dry in his when he pulled him to lie down beside him on the bed, caught his lips with his own. This was so much more intimate than the rutting they had partaken in. 

Howard let himself be pressed into the bed, hating and loving how gentle Steve was with him, like he couldn't bear hurting him. (A part of him basked in that thought, knowing it to be true.)  
Strong hands slid over his skin. Later they would take their time but now there was desperation boiling just under their skin, but Steve was still thorough when he prepared him. 

By the time Steve entered him, Howard was almost crying, trying to stifle the noise as the void in his chest filled with _Steve_ , as Steve filled him. Steve was no better off, voice hitching and letting out a long groan when he bottomed out. His eyes didn't leave Howard's. One of his hands pinned Howard's damaged wrist over his head, palm covering the place where his name had been unerringly, making Howard choke on an emotion he could not name. His own hand caught Steve's other one and their fingers entwined when they moved apart, lips just millimeters from one another when they came together again, setting a rhythm that left them gasping for breath. 

When they came it was sudden, Steve sobbed into his mouth and Howard cried out as he followed. The bond settled in their minds and Howard held Steve immobile, both his arms and legs wrapped around him. He didn't even mind when he heard Steve chuckle and half-heartedly trying to free himself of his octopus like grip. Contentment of a kind that Howard hadn't known before blanketed his every thought. There was a sense of completeness.

"Don't regret this, please? Not now and not when we're wrinkled and grey." Steve whispered against his throat.

"I won't." Howard promised. It didn't feel like a lie at all.


End file.
